The 12-year-old child of a single mom, a washed-up
milkshake-maker salesman, and a rock critic. (Tell me truly… is
there anything sadder than a rock critic?)

And I’m sharing these losers’ tales with you because you need to
understand something about yourself.

On this Monday morning in a humid August when you might not be
particularly optimistic or positive about the future… or the
present… or the past for that matter… I need you to understand
this:

You get to choose.

Whatever you want, you get to choose.

The stories?…

A 12-year-old girl was watching the Summer Olympics and saw
something she liked. We all see something we like in the
Olympics, don’t we? But this little girl saw the way a coach did
his coaching, and the little girl made a decision: she’s going to
be a star.

And this 57-year-old sad-sack travelling salesman dude got too
many orders for one of his milkshake machines from a burger
joint. Now look, he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth
(he made quota!), but he couldn’t quite believe his good luck and
wanted to see the place for himself. And man, was he surprised
when he decided to go and visit the burger flippers
extraordinaire in person.

And you might know that Bruce Springsteen is back on tour and
played Boston last week. A rock “critic” (stop laughing) wrote:

“It’s four in the morning and raining. I’m 27 today, feeling
old, listening to my records, and remembering that things were
different a decade ago… Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square
theatre, I saw my rock’n'roll past flash before my eyes. And I
saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is
Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he
made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first
time.”

Who are these beautiful losers?

The little girl who found her coach is Gabby Douglas. She left home (still hasn’t
been back in two years!) to go live with strange people of
another race in another state and become a champion.

The milkshake man is Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s. He saw his
future at the burger flippers’ roadside stand, and decided that
what he wanted to be was an
ex-salesman and the progenitor of the world’s
most famous restaurant chain. His life is immortalized in this
quirky, catchy Mark Knopfler tune.

None of your training, none of
your position, or privilege, or luck, or good fortune. They had
none of the advantages that you currently enjoy.

And yet.

They decided to change.

They decided to become something different.

They decided, it’s true, to become themselves.

You see, that’s sometimes the most difficult thing we can decide
to do in our lives.

Because becoming yourself means giving up other things. A home. A
story you tell yourself. A respectable bland career. An excuse
you’ve cherished and nourished and cultivated for years and years
and years.

Deciding to become who you were meant to be,
agreeing to the hardships, accepting the pain, taking the
ridicule that oftentimes goes with it…

That’s the most difficult thing you can do.

My namesake, Marcus Aurelius, said two millennia ago:

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

What you think is who you become.

Now, you can’t tell me that that little girl had it better than
you.

Or that your position is more hopeless than an over-the-hill guy
who peddles dairy drink stirrers.

Or that you’ll ever be in quite so desperate a position in your
life as to write rock-and-roll criticism for cash.

So if you ain’t got it half as bad as they had it, what’s
stopping you from becoming…

You?

Now I bet you probably have an answer to that question. And I’m
sure you think it’s a good one.

Because on this hot humid August dawn, I know you can’t possibly
be telling yourself that you’ve got it worse than Gabby or Ray or
Jon.

But you could take this opportunity today to
learn from Gabby and Ray and Jon.

Just as they decided to become something different, just as they
decided to become the heroes of their own future, you get to
choose. You get to take your thoughts and
make the life you want with them.

So I hope you’ll take this opportunity, in these fading days of
summer, two-thousand-twelve, to become who you were always meant
to be…